Customer Login:

It has been widely reported this morning that MalwareBytes was causing an issue blocking legitimate access to email, web sites and remote connections. We posted a workaround earlier this morning. Fortunately, the team at MalwareBytes has been able to resolve the issue.

Earlier this morning, we published a protection update that caused connection issues for many of our customers. As a side effect of the web protection blocks, the product also spiked memory usage and possibly caused a crash.

We have triaged this issue and pushed a protection update that resolves it. If the update does not resolve the issue for you, please shut down the product and restart it.

The root cause of the issue was a malformed protection update that the client couldn’t process correctly. We have pushed upwards of 20,000 of these protection updates routinely. We test every single one before it goes out. We pride ourselves on the safety and accuracy of our detection engines. To say I am heartbroken is an understatement.

We are working hard to not only triage your issues and get your computer or business back up and running but to also rebuild your trust. We are going to overhaul how we publish these protection updates so that this never happens again.

He provided his contact information as well in the post.

It isn’t clear if devices impacted by this will be able to update automatically. If you’re facing issues, please update Malwarebytes manually by following these steps:

It is most likely necessary to expand the notification center icons in the taskbar down by the clock by clicking the ^. (This icon appears different in different versions of Windows.)

Then, right click on the Malwarebytes icon:

If it is not already unchecked, uncheck Website Blocking:

Finally, right click on the icon and select Check for Updates:

You should be updated to database version v2018.01.27.12 or later to resolve the issue.

Re-enable the website blocking feature by repeating the steps and checking Website Blocking.

If you’re having a problem this morning accessing your email or other network resources or websites, and you’re getting a pop-up saying that sites are being blocked, you may be impacted by a recent MalwareBytes update that is causing similar problems for many people.